The untold story of 2012 is how "not" became the new relationship normal - not married, not a parent, not a close friend, not a loyal customer, not a committed employee, not a Democrat nor Republican, and not affiliated with organized religion.

This flight from relationship flies in the face of a society that says individual relationships matter most and where many organizations attempt to brand themselves as "relationship" focused. We speak in the poetry of relationships - home, family, friends, community, colleagues, customers, fellow citizens and even brothers and sisters in faith, but we increasingly live in the prose of divorce, single-parent families, transient community, alienated employees and customers, partisan political discourse and religious divisiveness.

For those keeping score, the unraveling of our relationships accelerated at home, work, in politics and faith in 2012. For the first time, more than 50 percent of children born to parents age 30 and younger will be to unwed mothers - with a poverty rate five times those of their married counterparts. This loss of two-parent families coincides with a two-decade trend reported in the American Sociological Review where close, go-to friends have dropped by a third and those with no friends have tripled.

According to a 2012 Harris Interactive poll, the number of respondents who quit doing business with a company because of a bad experience rose to 86 percent compared with 59 percent four years ago. A MetLife survey earlier this year found that one-third of workers planned to leave their current employer by year's end.

Political parties, desperate for additional votes, continue to hemorrhage members with key swing states like Florida, North Caroline and Arizona losing more than 200,000 party members to independent status over the past four years, according to Media Trackers, all part of a defection rate from political parties that has doubled the past 50 years. And Pew Research reports individuals unaffiliated with organized religion (the "Nones") has increased from 15 percent five years ago to 20 percent now - an increase of one-third.

It is time for the social scientists, business and organizations experts, political scientists and theologians to step outside their silos and connect the dots - relationships over the past several decades across our society are trending negative at a rate of 30 to 50 percent. The cumulative destruction that accompanies this seismic, unrelenting shift is not sustainable. Democracy, capitalism, communities, businesses, faith-based organizations and family systems cannot withstand this relational disintegration.

We need to be brutally honest about the relational trend and its impact. In spite of all the new strategies, social programs, powerful data, cool technology and flowery language, we are losing ground in relational satisfaction, trust, loyalty, and retention. We seem to spend more in relationship building efforts and receive less.

We must embrace relationships as our most valuable and value-creating resource. The loss of relationships translates into a form of hidden and growing risk. Relationships are society's great safety net.

According to Gallup, organizations scoring above the median in employee and customer engagement perform three times greater on a series of financial metrics. Likewise, an analysis of Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For found they outperformed their counterparts by a factor of four over seven years. Relationships are the elemental source of social, emotional and economic value.

We must better understand the causes that have led to our relational decline. No one started out 50 years ago to undermine relationships. Rather, a series of wonderful advancements have delivered unintended consequences - relationships have been demoted. One of the key advancements is technology. Technology certainly connects us in wonderful ways we could not have imagined, but it can also isolate.

The worry that computers would start to act like humans has been replaced with concern that humans are now acting too much like computers - consumed with the speed, quantity and access of information. We can now access and control information without interacting with humans - by spying on Facebook, accessing new media and websites.

Worse is how information and technology is used to attack and wound others. We had such high hopes for a more informed world. Yet beyond a certain point, research has shown that more information does not increase our ability to make better discernments. Instead, it makes us more confident and often arrogant.

A new year awaits us, as does an alternative narrative - where we make relationships our highest priority at home, work, in politics and faith. We must decide to love what unites us more than we hate what divides us - putting relationship above our inevitable differences and even our indifferences. And it will require a different form of leadership - relational leadership that knows how to invite and engage in a way builds productive relationships.

It is time to work on a new, new normal - defined by what we "are," versus "not."